The Paradox of Performance Being Reduced by Monetary Rewards

Dan Pink, a career analyst, said money is not the best motivator for an employer to use on an employee. Instead the employer or manager needs to make the employee feel intrinsically motivated in his or her job: “the more autonomy, mastery and purpose someone has in their job, the more motivated they become.”

Reward, Pink says, narrows our focus and actually makes complex problem solving less likely to happen. If the task is mechanical, then rewards do in fact increase performance. But if the task is only slightly more tricky, then rewards make performance, statistically speaking, worse.